


My Song Kills Yours

by dollyfish



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Canon Divergence, Dark, Eventual Smut, Fluff, Galra Empire, Galra Keith/Dark Shiro, M/M, Personality Desorder, Power Dynamics, Some gore later on, Unresolved Emotional Tension, keith is an emotional little shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:50:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8414350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyfish/pseuds/dollyfish
Summary: Keith could also hear the rattles of the wind that got in through the rifts amidst the bricks. It had been a great abode, once. The current state of the throne room made him remember with half-repressed longing the slick, vibrant tiles of his own quarters, back at home. They probably weren't so spotless anymore.
The one who sat on the throne could be described as many things, but human; and they were all so grim that Keith didn't know such words at all.
 
  "There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights."Dracula, Bram Stoker





	

**Author's Note:**

> so, this is not a Beauty and the Beast AU, not completely. I'm heavily inspired by other fanfictions and original works here and on other platforms -- such as [ hey, hey, my playmate](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7646716/chapters/17408383), a lovely fanwork that I'm thoroughly enjoying. I hope the author doesn't mind me using a concept I liked-- Thace as Keith's father. The rest, though, is mine, and plots and relationships as they develop are fundamentally different;  
> I also should remind you of that little tag up there, that is "Power Dynamics". Fear not, everything is extremely consensual. Keith will not be forced to do anything, ever, and consent is an important side of their relationship I intend to work on.  
> ...Shiro's dark personality, which will be addressed as "Kuro", will indeed appear though and, well, it's gonna be hella fun. For everyone except Shiro.
> 
> In case there's any particular warnings about content, I'll put them at the beginning of chapters. Thank you for your time!

 

 

 

_I am going to cover his eyes in light._

**Ray Gonzales**

 

 

 

 

 

 

A creature of darkness was meant to stay in its domain of darkness. Centuries had passed, without seeing the light of day, and they had not been gentle to that side of the small, miserable, uncharted moon that skirted the edges of the known universe. Everything that survived in such a place ceased to be pure and became nothing but a shadow.

From a clearing, a thick line fo smoke spiraled up, blending with the sickly mistiness that loomed over the endless extent of the forest. That which grew and thrived in perpetual night was no ordinary forest: what was not cold, heartless, still and dead had no business in there, found a territory no more prosperous than bone-white ashes, and found premature death whispering through a labyrinth of branches.

The ship had landed badly, hardly functional anymore. It could not be impossible to start it again, if the need ever presented itself, but another wormhole travel was out of question. There was no time to pay these matters any mind.

The boy who nimbly got off the Galran aircraft was indeed premature. He, a lissome, untainted, purple thing, cast the light gold-plated helmet to the ground and ran. Then it appeared before him. The unknown, unfamiliar sight of a ruin.

At the end of a paved pathway, the entrance was unguarded -- of course -- and unlocked. It was an arch, what must have once been a portal. Now, harsh stone that could crumble under its own weight an any given moment, enveloped by black curls of poison ivy, which had clearly never been cut. In the disarranged garden, too, nothing appeared to have ever been cared for. Thorny, satiny roses grew only in one shade of black, emanating a distastefully sweet, stale odour, along with shrubs of blackthorns, and brambles of sour crabapples, and grapes, and pomegranates. If one had tried them, deluded by their sinisterly rich proportions, one drop of their juice would have been enough for a heart to instantly go rigid. This could not change: all that bloomed here was sick, rotten, unliving.

However, the boy strided forward. The rythm of his paces -- regal, just as much as his clothes were not -- increased slightly when he found a thread of conscious fear in himself, wrapping around his insides.

Dread was not getting the upper hand. It simply could not. Despite his young age, he knew what it meant to be scared, and he could grow numb to it if he so wished. Shallow breaths fell off godlike pale lips. He looked indeed very fair, too. Seventeen, eighteen at most.

The boy didn't so much as hesitate on the cracked steps that preceded the main gate of the castle. It was like something very heavy had fallen from above, maybe one of the balconies, and then had crushed on the threshold. He had been wrong; ruins where barely more devastated than what stood before his eyes, far from any kind of civilization.

Thorns frome some dark violet flowers had torn his cotton pants. Clutching the flimsy white nightshirt at his chest to endure the cold, he knocked at the hardwood door, which was reinforced by unyelding iron bars. His teetering knuckles did produce a sound, in fact, but an extremely discouraging one, dull and apathetic.

He knocked at the door over and over, shouting, desperate to be heard. Pleaded the gods. He pleaded and knocked too hard and bloodied his hand.

A spine-chilling, heinous growl made him freeze. He found it impossible to associate it with anything he knew of, not even the most savage thing. More horrifying to hear than ten stabs to the stomach -- his father's stomach. He had thought nothing could be worse. It was an awful moment to realise he didn't know anything.

He turned around. Only darkness was there.

It was staring at him, predatory. And it growled.

He had known the cruelty of men, but he couldn't have expected the cruelty of this.

Maybe it was the blood to awaken what it was that wouldn't take pity on him. The massive door was standing there, mockingly indifferent, and then it moved. It let him in.

Finally, he knew with absolute certainty that from the very moment he had set foot on that tragic, miserable, uncharted moon, some _thing_ had been watching.

 

 

\---

 

 

Wakeful eyes pursued the last glimpse  of the disheveled satin laces until they disappeared from sight. The outsider had not waited a second longer before dashing inside the heavy doors, which had then closed shut with a rattling echo, protecting him from the forest and what lied there, in waiting. That is to say, not bright, intelligent things that could feel something other than hunger.

It was the clothes worn by him that had roused curiosity in the Fallen Paladin.

Such a surreal image. Fine cloth concealed everything the Galra considered shameful to expose: a slender neck, concordant thighs. And yet enough was left visible, simply because of the messy state of the boy, to observe that the skin was purple, slick with fatigue, harshly washed out by the garden's shadows.

There was candor in that surreality, a beauty the Paladin couldn't stand.

But dwelling on it would have only made him sick; so he turned his face away, his shoulder leaning on the column that sustained the window. The shattered glass mirrored his sharp eyes, and he averted them. It was for the best.

 

 

\---

 

 

  
At the far end of a poorly illuminated corridor, with walls as dark as obsidian, Keith found a hall. He was not conceded a quiet entrance, since his steps, his breathing, his heartbeat -- even the smallest sound propagated like thunder. Everything resonated. His very presence clanged through the castle's ubiquitous tone in more than a few ways. Dust covered the unique marble floor and every small thing, and despite every inch of his body quivering with the weariness left from long hours of space travel, as well as his mind feeling like it had been turned inside out, he remembered enough of himself to know he was not even a third of this castle's age.

One elaboured chandelier hanged heavily from a frescoed roof, its candles all long burned out. There had been three, once.

Keith could see the crevices branching from two symmetrical holes in the dome, derelict, with no purpose other than eating away most of the cieling.

Keith could also hear the rattles of the wind that got in through the rifts amidst the bricks. It had been a great abode, once. The current state of the throne room made him remember with half-repressed longing the slick, vibrant tiles of his own quarters, back at home. They probably weren't so spotless anymore.

The _one_ who sat on the throne could be described as many things, but human; and they were all so grim that Keith didn't know such words at all.

Keith stumbled forward when the door closed behind his back.

His teeth refused to clatter, no matter how dreadful the sight, which almost-lay on a low pedestal preceded by a couple steps with patience and but a hint of derisive slackness. The face, the skin color was that of a human. A hand of flesh was perched on the left armrest, while the head of the creature rested upon a metallic fist. An attentive glance was enough to recognize Galran steel. One of the creature's eyebrows arched at some thing he must have deemed irregular, or unforeseen, but it did nothing to change the look of malevolence that dried his strongly marked features.

He spoke loud enough for Keith to feel it in his throat. "Was it a nice journey?"

Keith's forehead creased at that. "A-A nice..."

"Seems like Galrans are beginning to understand the concept of good manners." He leaned over his legs, bracing an elbow on the knee closer to him. He gave off an unbreaking aura of composure. "After all, didn't they dress you up nicely? I reckon a tribute such as one of their own should appease me, but then they go and neglect the damage such a tiresome trip would entail. Your homeworld is quite far from here, isn't it? They must know I'm not the picky type."

"I no longer have a homeworld." At least, Keith was able to affirm that with confidence. He had thought that, of course he had, but make it known to another felt much less harmful.

The man smiled. A tarnished, hardened twist of lips that din't at all mean pleasantness. "Oh, I was told that too. How many years has it been..."

"I-I wasn't-- I'm not a tribute. I beg of y-you to listen."

"Really now?"

"Please," Keith repeated, this time barely a mumble, when he felt drops of heat sliding against his ankles. The lower halves of his pants had been irreversibly ripped to shreds, bubbles of red red blood lining on the scratches where the thorns had reached his skin. Blood was hotter than he remembered.

"So your presence is not supposed to indulge what's left of my senses. Good. Your people have yet to completely loose their minds."

There was a twisted clarity in the man's words, but Keith was just too angry, too tired, and too lost to pay it any mind. He understood his presence wasn't appreciated. He had no choice but to ignore that too. "What am I? An exile. Nothing more." The creature's face seem to be carved in stone, since it didn't change in the slightest. "... Galra has ceased to be safe. Emperor Zarkon ordered the slaughter of his brother's faction, the people who wanted Thace to deprive him of the throne. That happened last night. They are now dead, from first to last. The last being my fa--" The feeling at the bottom of his throat, like he was being strangled by the iron hand still resting on the armrest, was so strong he had to bite it down. "All so my father would know Zarkon was coming. It was coming. I was to be dead. I don't know what I am, but Keith, son of Thace, and last of his men standing."

He breathed out harshly. Having said all there was to say, he would have genuinely curled near the small fire burning in one of the braziers nestled in the walls. Nothing would have relaxed him more than the biting heat stinging his back and shoulders, nothing.

If only those pitiless eyes weren't looking at him like a wolf looks at a rabbit. Or like a god looks at a human.

"My castle," a disbelieving chuckle, "has turned into a shelter for the outcasts. My bad, I wasn't informed."

"If you are Shiro, the Fallen Paladin who once fought for freedom, then yes, I've come to seek your aid!"

All disdain fell from Shiro's face the exact moment Keith pronounced his name. To Keith's surprise, his expression didn't close in sheer anger, or hatred, and he didn't sneer or bark at him like the beast he had heard half-whispered stories about. Still, the empty glint his eyes conveyed had something that made Keith's insides squirm, out of real fear this time.

"Your journey was for nothing." Keeping his gaze fixed on the deep crack in Keith's burning resolve, he continued. "If your father gave you hope, if he persuaded you that here you would find a helping hand, any acceptance and support, and if he told you that the _monster_ living here was something you could deal with, I'm sorry to tell you that he was lying through his teeth."

There was nothing else to do. Keith walked forward, using the remnants of his energy to make sure his legs wouldn't betray him at last, and albeit every step caused him to close his eyes as though waiting for the whiplash. Only when Shiro was at such close proximity, that he could have grazed his boots if he leaned forward. Keith got down on his knees at the bottom of the stairs.

"I have nowhere else to go." Since that night, he had _nothing_ , and he had come to realize this slower than he should have. Keith didn't wipe his brow from the sweat and the dirt; rather held his head high for Shiro to look all there was to see and not to see.

"You are a prince. You don't need to plead."

"Don't you see? I'm doing it anyway. Becuase this is your house. And if you take me in, I won't be afraid... I shall be yours too."

"You can't stay." That made Keith, if not smile, soften the line of his bitten mouth.

"I made a promise-- I apologize."

Shiro closed his eyes, and breathed in.

Shiro opened them, and looked like life had spent him and thrown him away. He opened something that had been locked away. And what a gentle thing it was.

"I'll leave the door open. When the time comes, just go."

**Author's Note:**

> *whale noises* thanks for read i n g  
> hope you enjoyed, comments are the fuel that keeps me going. corrections, criticism, anything is appreciated. take into account that english is not my first language, it takes a while for me to write and edit a chapter, so I can't make promises. but I care for this story, and I'll try my best. that being said, see you next week - may god help me -, but by all means feel free to bug me on [ tumblr](http://chvvva.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/chvvva) lol


End file.
